Miss Frenczi And Mr. Hibler In Gryphon By Charles Speler Analysis

Any school curriculum should aim at enabling children to be able to think in broader terms, motivate them to want to be more knowledgeable and above all, allow them to come up with new approaches to problem solving. However, more too often teachers tend to limit the students to only the known facts in text books, something which prompts them to remain in their comfort zones. Additionally, the purpose of any formal education is not only to gain formal knowledge but also to gain social knowledge. Different teachers will have different approaches to achieve this. Despite the approach used, in the end of the day, they are expected to have involved and impacted positively on the different characters of children in their classrooms that is, the shy,

Hibler in Gryphon by Charles Baxter. Mr. Hibler mainly applies the bureaucratic curriculum approach whereby, the teacher decides what the students will study. Under this curriculum, students are only bound to the limits of their syllabus. On the other hand, Miss Ferenczi applies the existentialist curriculum whereby there is nothing like the right answer but rather, students are directed towards facts that will enable them to choose the correct answers. As seen in the analysis, “this prompted them to do more research and discuss amongst themselves hence, expanding their knowledge”. When the narrator reaches home after school completing his first day with Miss. Ferenczi, the narrator says that “I ran into the living room, pulled out a dictionary next to the TV stand and opened it to the G’s. Gryphon: Variant of griffin. Griffin: a fabulous beast with the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion. Fabulous was right. I shouted with triumph and ran outside to put my father’s tools back in their place.” This suggests that an effective school curriculum should motivate students to be more curious, do research and yearn to learn more. However, like Mr. Hibler, most teachers fail to achieve this. Consequently, this results to bunch of children who are only interested understanding what their syllabus for exam purposes rather than motivating them to do more research. The author uses Miss Ferenczi to indicate what a good curriculum should be like. The children were not aware if the stories that Miss Ferenczi told them were true. Consequently, this prompted them to do more research and discuss amongst themselves hence, expanding their knowledge (characteristics of a good school curriculum, Baxter